Little Brother

All my life I have had pets. When I was very young, I think for my 6th birthday, I got a puppy. I named her Gina (Princess Gina to be precise - I even made her a construction paper crown). For reasons I'm still not entirely clear about, she was renamed Sage.

Sage and I grew up together. We watched my parents get divorced and traded houses every Wednesday for a summer. We moved to 6 new houses in 3 years. At some point I started looking at colleges but couldn't imagine leaving her behind. In the end she left me. Her life spanned some of my earliest memories all the way through my packing to leave home.

The summer of the divorce, my mom get a cat. She was a beautiful little creature. We found out when she was a few years old that she was a different breed then we first believed. [We thought she was Siamese but she was actually Tonkinese - it's a real thing. You can look it up.] When Sage died, Kaytee (the cat) was very lonely. The vet said she was depressed and that we should get her a kitten. Turned out she didn't really want to be anyone's mommy, but she wasn't lonely anymore. It took her a while to warm up to Willie but eventually they were like two peas in a pod (or two kittens in a drawer).


Kaytee lived to be 18 years old. By the end she was a creaky old lady, but still very sweet. She's been gone for a couple of years now. Two weeks ago, we lost our sweet boy Willie, at the age of 15. This is how I imagine they will be always be.